MORAGA, CA – A pilot guides their aircraft through a lot of takeoffs and landings, and some are smooth and others can be a bit bumpy.
For the top-seeded Pilots of St. Joseph Notre Dame, and in a season of its own ups and downs, the girls from the Island City have flown into the catbird seat after a 67-58 victory over No. 3 seed Cardinal Newman-Santa Rosa at St. Mary’s College on Friday night lands them the first ever CIF North Coast Section Open Division championship and fifth NCS title in school history.
The victory silences the doubters and naysayers that have dogged St. Joseph Notre Dame (23-7) since the very beginning of the season when Cal-Hi Sports made them its pre-season top team in the NCS and Prep2Prep followed the lead and put the Pilots on top of its first rankings.
Since then St. Joseph Notre Dame has held that position despite not being on top of the NCS in any other local rankings, and some tumultuous circumstances including the resignation of former head coach Shawn Hipol.
“It wasn’t me. It was all them,” remarked interim head coach Brian Sato. “I never in a million years thought I would be in this situation. It’s been a crazy journey, but I did it for the girls.”
A big factor in the game was the defense of St. Joseph Notre Dame on Cardinal Newman UC Santa Barbara-bound senior Anya Choice.
Choice was coming off an amazing 43-point performance in the Cardinals semifinal win over Salesian, but in this game the defense, led by one of the state’s top sophomore guards, Talana Lepolo, completely took her out of her game, and she fouled out, with the help of some questionable calls, with 3:23 left to play after only scoring five points.
Even with Choice in foul trouble from the very start, and only playing about 15 minutes of the game, Newman took a 46-39 lead on a three-pointer by junior Aysia Dural to open the fourth quarter with Choice on the bench. When Choice returned with 4:34 remaining the score was tied 49-49, and the Cardinals would take a final lead at 52-49, but the Pilots were already in high flight and in the middle of a 26-6 run that included a 16-0 stretch from the time it was 49-49, and at that point the lead was 65-52 and Newman was spent.
Junior Randi Harding came off the bench to lead St. Joseph Notre Dame with 18 points (three three-pointers), with 10 of the points in the fourth quarter. Sophomore standout Talana Lepolo had 14 points and four steals, and played exceptional defense on Choice, and junior Makena Mastora had 11 points and a team-high eight rebounds.
Senior Sophie Nilsson had two three-pointers and finished with nine points and five rebounds, UC Riverside-bound senior Malia Mastora only had seven points, but they all came in the second half, including a key three-pointer that tied the game at 49-49, plus she played exceptional defense while committing only one foul.
Sato and his assistants knew they would need a total team effort to beat Newman, and that’s exactly what they got.
“We’re all in this together, and it was definitely a mindset that everyone from 1 through 12 needed to be ready to contribute, and Randi really stepped up,” Sato said.
When asked prior to the game what he planned to do different than Salesian in trying to defend Choice, what Sato had to say worked to perfection.
“Never leave her out of our site, and slow her down and force the ball into the hands of other players,” Sato responded.
Besides Choice being taken out of the game by fouls and the Pilots defense, the Cardinals shot poorly from the free-throw line for the second straight game. They escaped Salesian after going 16 of 32 from the charity stripe, but their 10 of 19 performance against St. Joseph Notre Dame was certainly a contributing factor in the loss.
Cardinal Newman (28-3) got 13 points (three-three-pointers) from Cal-State East Bay-signed Christina Bacci, 12 points and seven rebounds off the bench from junior Mariah Harris, including three-pointer that gave the Cardinals their final lead at 52-49, 11 points from senior Emma Nordby, and nine points and a team-high nine rebounds and four assists from Dural.
Newman will now await their seeding placement in the Northern Regional Open Division but no matter whether the CIF goes with 6, 7 or 8 teams in the bracket it’s not looking like the Cardinals can get a home game.
For St. Joseph Notre Dame, who posed after the game with a picture of former coach Hipol, who sent congratulatory texts to the team after their semifinal win over Bishop O’Dowd, the Pilots are looking like a top three seed.
To us that looks like the case regardless of how many teams are seeded in the Open NorCals, and even if both Clovis West-Fresno and Clovis North-Fresno, the finalists in the CIF Central Section Open Division title game on Saturday night, are placed in the Northern Region.
